


love at first sight (in the back of an ambulance at three in the morning)

by EtherealPrince



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Jewish Character, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, EMT AU, M/M, MeetCute, Paramedic AU, dubious knowledge of medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27144086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtherealPrince/pseuds/EtherealPrince
Summary: EMT Erik Lehnsherr gets a call from someone on Graymalkin Lane during his night shift. Charles Xavier is possibly the best patient he's ever had.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 20
Kudos: 223





	love at first sight (in the back of an ambulance at three in the morning)

_“911 dispatch, what is your emergency?”_

“Ah, yes, well--you see, it’s a mite embarrassing to say, but I do believe I’m having some violent spasms in my legs that just will not stop.”

_“And what is your address, sir?”_

“1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center?”

_“EMS is on their way. Is there any other information that is important to know?”_

“I’m a paraplegic.”

\------

_“6291, we have a 26-omega-eight at 1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center. Reported violent spasms in the legs, patient is paraplegic. Do you copy?”_

Erik slides his eyes over to Logan, while his head stays firmly leant on his fist against the window of the ambulance. Graymalkin was close, right?

Even though he wasn’t a telepath, Logan jerks his head in an approximation of a nod and gives him his ‘let’s take it’ grunt--turns out that street was close after all. Erik rights himself in his seat and switches on his radio.

“6291, we copy. On our way.”

_“Received.”_

The dispatcher left the line, and Erik and Logan are left with the rumbling of the ambulance’s engine and the quiet chatter of their coworkers on the radio to keep them company during this quiet hour of the night.

New York, both the city and the state itself, never slept--but for some reason the time slot between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning was always a little less busy than the rest of the 8 to 5 shift. People tended to calm down when time ticked past the ‘really late at night’ phase and into the ‘early in the morning’ phase.

Any call could turn out to be anything. Chest pain could be a heart attack, slurred speech could be a stroke, a gunshot wound could sever the brainstem or miss everything vital by a hair. Whenever Erik started to think that maybe he had seen everything, something new came up that threw that notion out the proverbial window.

He knew that paralysis victims were commonly hit by tremors and spasms left over from any trauma they may have experienced to their affected anatomy, but he had never taken a call to assist someone with such a problem before. He had taken people with different degrees of paralysis, sure, but not in this exact situation.

Hopefully there would be no swearing at him or vomiting uncontrollably. That was just what Erik hoped for in every single call he took.

Graymalkin lane was up fairly north in Westchester county, he soon came to learn, and also fairly isolated. This was the rich part of town, where wealthy families built their mansions and surrounded them with forests and tall gates to keep prying eyes out. Erik can’t help a thought of _‘don’t these people have personal doctors or something?’_

“Erik.” Logan huffs, cocking his head out the window of the ambulance. Erik looks, and sure enough, they’ve pulled up at an ivy-covered brick wall that brackets a large, wrought-iron gate. He squints at the plaque embedded in the vines:

_Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters._

Huh.

What the hell are they doing, pulling up to a private school at three in the morning? Why would their patient be here? Do teachers usually stay at private schools if they’re employed there? God forbid, was it one of the children that they were here for?

 _Lots of unanswered questions,_ Erik thinks, _love those._ He assumes they’d be answered soon enough.

Logan hits him in the arm. “Erik, the gate.”

He starts, suddenly remembering what his purpose was in this kind of situation, and lifts his hand to unlock the mechanism on the gate remotely so it can swing open. It had taken a lot-- _a lot_ \-- of convincing to get Westchester’s emergency services to let a metallokinetic mutant join their ranks as an EMT, including shoving Erik into anger management therapy and pairing him up with the most intimidating (read: hairy and gruff) shift partner on payroll, but when he was around nobody needed a code to get into gated communities and homes, so there was one pro.

Maybe that was also slightly illegal, but nobody had complained yet.

They roll into the property, and pull up in front of the patient’s stately abode-school-mansion after circling around the obscenely huge roundabout in front of the entrance. All lights were off in all windows, except one: the light behind the front door.

It hadn’t taken long for Logan and Erik to arrive after they received the call, but Graymalkin was a ways north, so maybe the patient had the time to somehow get themself down to the front in that short span of time. The spasms couldn’t be that bad if they could still get around (presumably in a wheelchair). 

At least, Erik hoped they couldn’t be. He’d never forget the time a seizing patient with inhuman aim slammed their shoe directly into his crotch. The ride of shame to the nearest gas station to get a bag of ice was the worst thing he had ever experienced, right next to having a panic attack at synagogue once (once!) and accidentally bending the Ner Tamid all out of shape.

He fixed it, of course he did, his rabbi was very understanding--but he doesn’t go to service nearly as often since.

Erik is the one who lugs the medical bag out of the ambulance and hauls it over his shoulder before he and Logan approach the front door. Logan knocks, and then knocks again not even five seconds later. Erik shoots him a look.

Even though it’s dark, Logan’s eyes reflect light like a cat’s so Erik can see them roll. He swats him in the arm with his free hand, but doesn’t get to do more than that before the door opens.

Thank god Erik was expecting a person in a wheelchair to turn up, because he doesn’t have to do that awkward look-down thing people do when they expect someone on two legs and are met with something different. No, when the patient opens up for them Erik is looking right into their eyes.

Their very, very blue eyes.

The patient is a man around his age, with dark hair that curls around his ears and pale skin and red lips. He’s wearing surprisingly old- fashioned silk pajamas, bless him, and sits in a motorized wheelchair that looks more fashionable than any clothes Erik has seen on a living person.

He’s also gripping onto one of his thighs so tight the fabric of his pants is pulled taut, which allows Erik to clearly see the muscles jumping and twitching under his skin through them. The spasms were definitely violent, so much that even though the patient likely couldn’t feel anything in his legs they might make his back ache.

He thinks all of this in around two seconds as Logan gives the patient the “Good evening, what are we here for?” spiel.

The patient--a name, Erik needed a name to match the face please--opens his mouth while he and Erik are still looking at each other and stutters for a second before snapping out of it and turning to Logan fully.

“Yes, hi, I’m--well, obviously I’m paralysed, and I’m having these tremors that are just awful. They don’t hurt in my legs, again quite obviously, but they make it impossible to sleep, and I’d like to know what’s wrong with me.”

The patient punctuates his statement with a nervous little laugh that betrays an awful lot of fear about his condition, and Erik feels for him. 

“So you’d like to go to the hospital to get checked out?” He asks, and gets those blue eyes turned on him again.

“Yes, please. I’d usually have a friend drive me but he’s out of town, and my sister doesn’t have her licence, so…”

That sounded good enough for him. Erik regrets heaving the medical bag up to the patient’s stoop just to see he didn’t need it, but it was easier to work in the truck, anyway. The one issue was the wheelchair.

Erik motions vaguely to the patient with one gloved hand. “Do you have a folding wheelchair you can transfer into for getting in and out of the truck and into the hospital?”

The patient starts, taking a breath in and looking back to a hallway that led out of the main room of the mansion. “Yes, I do, but it’s in a closet all the way at the end of the hall, and--”

“That’s no problem.” Erik says, and he searches down the hallways with his powers to find the folded up, lightweight signature of a portable wheelchair behind a metal doorknob. He unlocks and opens the closet door with a twitch of his finger, and when he crooks it back toward himself the wheelchair gracefully floats out, sets itself down next to the patient, and unfolds.

The patient is awe-stricken, and his mouth quickly turns up in a smile. “You’re a mutant!”

Erik clears his throat awkwardly. “Yes. Do you need help transferring?”

“That’s amazing, I had no idea NY EMS had mutants on the job--well, I don’t usually need help, but right now I really don’t think I would be able to-”

Without another word, Logan steps inside and carefully helps the patient transfer from his motorized wheelchair to the collapsable one with an arm around his ribcage and another holding onto one of his arms. The patient settles into his new seat gratefully, and reaches down to adjust his legs. “Thank you very much, my friend.”

When Logan takes the handles of the patient’s wheelchair and the three of them head to the back of the truck, the patient keeps talking. More specifically, he keeps talking to Erik, and his animated way of speaking and honestly delightful smile are not making it easy for him to focus. Right when Logan’s about to pick him up and put him on the stretcher in the back of the truck, he sticks out his hand to Erik for him to shake.

He does shake his hand, of course. He wasn’t an animal.

“Charles Xavier.” The patient introduces himself. Finally. “I’m the headmaster of the school, here. It’s such a pleasure and an honor to meet you.”

A pleasure _and_ an honor? High praise for someone like Erik. He humors Charles: “Erik Lehnsherr. I’m really not that special.”

Charles flaps his hand dismissively at him while Logan is actively picking him up under the knees and back like a princess. “Oh, nonsense, everyone’s special. I’ve certainly never met a mutant with metallokinesis before!”

Something about that doesn’t feel right to Erik. Whenever people noticed he was a mutant, they usually didn’t tack on the _metallo-_ to the _kinesis._

“It was fairly easy to figure out.” Charles says out of nowhere, and Erik raises an eyebrow at him.

“Figure out what--” But he can’t finish, because Logan’s shaking him by the shoulder and telling him to get up in the truck, they’re going to go. 

Before he leaves for the front Logan leans on one of the doors and asks “Which hospital are you aimin’ to head to, Mr. Xavier?” 

Without pause, “Phelps, if you please.” Is the answer. Logan raps his hand on the side of the truck before closing the double doors, which slam closed with a muffled _thump_ and Erik and Charles are left alone.

Erik goes over his checklist: is the patient buckled in safely, is the patient distressed, is the patient in pain, is the patient high or drunk. The answers are Yes, no, maybe, no.

“Are you in any pain, Mr. Xavier?” Erik asks, sitting himself down heavily next to the stretcher as the ambulance begins to move. He leans over to grab his clipboard with all the blank report papers on it and slides a pen out of his shirt pocket.

Charles seems to think about that one. “No, not particularly--except for my back, it’s starting to twinge there.”

Erik makes a note of that. “And how long have these tremors been going on for?”

“Oh, about an hour or so.”

Also noted. “Have you ever had them before?”

This is where Charles’ tone gets more serious. “No, I haven’t.”

“And were you born paraplegic or was this the result of trauma?”

“Trauma.”

“How long ago?”

“Five years.”

Five years was a good long time to be paralyzed from the waist down without any major problems. That meant that Charles’ tremors were either nothing to worry about, just lasting damage brought on by stress or overactivity or something of the sort, or that they were very serious. Erik _Hms._

Between filling in blanks on the report sheet, Erik sticks his pen in his mouth and leans forward to adjust the backrest of the stretcher so that Charles was sitting up a bit more. He can still see his legs spasming under the blanket they had been covered with.

Now for more questions. Always more questions.

“How old are you, Mr. Xavier?”

“Please, call me Charles.” Charles insists. “And I’m 33.”

Erik was 36. That was nice to know.

“So your accident happened when you were 28?”

“Yes. Is that bad?”

Erik shakes his head, and Charles physically seems to relax. “Most commonly this kind of thing is normal. There’s a very small chance it could be a sign of nerve damage, but since you’re so clear in the head and not in terrible pain I’d doubt it.”

Charles sighs, holding one of his hands over his heart. “Thank god. I’d hate to have to be stuck in the hospital while there’s classes I need to teach.”

And because Erik can’t help it, he wants to know more, he asks “What do you teach?”

“Subject or grade?”

“Both?”

Charles laughs, interlaces his long fingers over his stomach. “We provide education from the 7th grade level up to college. I teach literature, when I’m not busy...headmaster-ing.”

Right, he was in charge of the place. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to know that Charles taught classes in addition. Erik had the feeling that the man sitting in front of him was very, very smart.

“I think having two PhDs makes me quite smart, yes.”

“There you go again.” Erik blurts, wagging his finger at Charles while his elbow kept his paper down on the clipboard. “You did it outside, and just now--what was that? You’re a mutant, aren’t you?”

Charles gives him a kind, apologetic smile. “I do apologize, my friend. I’m a telepath--and sometimes I just overhear thoughts when they’re thought very loudly. I’ll reign myself back in.”

A telepath. Erik had only met one of those before Charles, and she wasn’t nearly as pleasant to be around. 

“No, no, it’s fine.” He insists, even though with Emma he barred her from going in his head 24/7. “I don’t mind.”

Charles gives him another look.

“I’m going to anyway, just for your comfort. I promise I’m nothing like your lady friend.”

“Hypocrite.”

Charles laughs, and the corners of his eyes crinkle and smile lines pop up around his mouth and Erik is more than a little infatuated.

There’s still laughter in his companion’s voice when he speaks up again-- “And your partner, is he a mutant too? I saw his eyes, in the dark, that’s not usually something eyes do.”

Erik nods. “Yeah, Logan’s a mutant. Work put me with him so I’d be controlled, but I don’t know what they were thinking, putting a guy who can control metal with a guy who has metal bones.”

Charles’ eyes widen comically. “Metal bones? How fascinating.”

“There’s a lot more to him than that,” Erik snorts. “But he’d kill me if I went and outed him to a stranger.”

“Even a kindly stranger?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

Another laugh, this time from the both of them. Erik ducks his head down and continues filling out the report on Charles, and when he’s done he slides the clipboard back onto the counter and leans on the shelf next to his seat. Logan’s a smooth driver, so the truck isn’t bumping around all over the place, which he’s thankful for.

Phelps Medical Center was fairly far away, but it was the closest hospital to where Charles lived, so they’d be in here for a while. _Could be worse,_ Erik thinks.

“So, your school.” He starts slowly, more wanting to fill up the silence in the truck than anything else. “Is it for...humans?”

Charles regards him patiently, then answers. “Yes, unless you mean humans _with mutations,_ then in that case especially yes.”

Erik rolls his eyes. “So it’s a school for mutants?”

“Yes again!” Charles beams. “Founded it myself. We currently have 52 students enrolled, all with different mutations ranging in everything from having wings to talking to animals. They’re all brilliant kids.”

“Isn’t that biting off more than you can chew?”

Charles quirks an eyebrow at him. “Of course not. I have staff, of course, it’s not like I’m wrangling everyone by myself.”

“I’m just saying…” Erik trails off. “My mutation made it hard for me to succeed in school even when I tried.”

His patient’s eyes soften, then, and he leans over to pat the top of Erik’s hand where it rested on his knee. “If that’s the truth, then I am thoroughly proud of you for making it to where you are now, my friend.”

Erik was definitely not expecting such genuine pride to come from Charles, a man who he had met for the first time less than an hour ago, but for some reason it doesn’t make him uncomfortable or irritated. His eyes flick down to the NY-EMS patch on his sleeve, and he feels...something. Something good.

“Thank you.” He manages to say. “It took a lot.”

“I can only imagine.” Charles says softly, with something in his eyes that Erik can’t name but that makes him feel warm. Was Charles like this with his students? Just- all around welcoming and patient and kind and open?

Did everyone he talked to feel warmth like Erik felt now? Or was he special?

He’s thinking about it too much. _You’re thinking about it too much,_ he tells himself, and clears his throat, shifts his position so he can cross one ankle over his knee. Erik always feels folded up in the back of the ambulance, especially when there was someone in there with him.

Erik looks to his right out the windows in the back, where the road stretches on behind them in the dark. Lights from buildings dot the streets on either side--they must be getting close to the hospital.

Would it be foolish of Erik to admit that he’d rather spend more time talking to Charles than continue on his shift?

He sees Charles laugh shortly under his breath and smile, close-lipped, but he says nothing.

They watch the road go by together for a while, and Erik keeps a close eye on Charles’ legs. They’re still twitching, but now he can see that it isn’t nearly as violently as they were when he and Logan picked him up. Maybe it was a stress thing, after all. Maybe school was busy and Charles overworked himself to the point of exhaustion and then some--he certainly seemed like the type of man to do it.

Either way, Erik was confident Charles would be alright. And he better be, because Erik had half a mind to visit him at his school again when he wasn’t on his shift and Charles wasn’t having health problems. 

“What’s that around your neck?” Charles asks quietly, out of the blue. He sounds tired.

Erik processes what he said and then makes a short sound, hooking his finger under the collar of his uniform to pull out the cord around his neck and the little wooden star that was attached to it. “Mogen David,” He said simply. “I’m Jewish.”

Charles hums. “How nice. I notice it’s not metal.”

Erik gives him a toothy grin, at that. “I have enough metal on me to be a threat without this.” he says, tucking the pendant back under his shirt. “I’m still not sure if it would be offensive or not to use the star as a weapon if I needed to.”

Charles laughs softly. “I couldn’t tell you. It’s very pretty.”

“My mother made it,” He shakes his head while trying to remember. “A few years ago, for me. Carved the wood and everything.”

“Fascinating!”

Erik hums, and they lapse back into a comfortable silence.

With most people, silence _wasn’t_ comfortable, and Erik wasn’t very good at filling space. With Charles, it was just...different. It was such a relief to be able to sit near someone and not say anything, and also not feel like you’re dying.

Charles was a very attractive man, and he was intelligent, and he was witty, kind, helpful, respectful...Erik cursed himself inwardly, because he had definitely played the part of a movie protagonist and fallen in love with someone on the job.

Wait. Erik quickly thought back to what Emma had taught him and put up those strange mental-shield- blockers around his mind, so that Charles couldn’t hear him think any of that trollop about him. The shields fade into place, and Erik hopes that they work. It wasn’t Charles’ fault specifically, Erik more just didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of him.

“They work.” Charles provides helpfully, head turned slightly away from Erik to look out the window. He doesn’t sound mad, dejected, or depressed at this revelation. Erik was safe.

“How are your legs feeling?” He asks Charles again, nodding his head at said legs.

His patient looks down at them, and then shrugs. “The twinge in my back is still there.”

“It’s most likely just left over from the tremors. My bet is it’ll fade within minutes.”

“What will happen at the hospital?” Charles asks him, that fear and nervousness creeping back into his voice. Erik understood--nobody liked hospitals. Hell, he was an EMT and he didn’t like hospitals (when he was the one being treated, at least).

He sucks a deep breath in, twists to the side a bit so that his spine cracks. “They’re going to give you a physical, just to check on your legs and back, and they’re going to ask you a lot more questions. Might send you home with medication or give you an IV for a night depending on what caused the tremors.”

“What do you think caused them?” Charles asks him. He shrugs.

“Stress. Overexertion.”

Charles laughs at that, but it’s tired. Erik knows he’s right.

“Now that you mention it, that might be the reason for most if not all of my health problems. I swear I’ll go bald by 40 if I keep going down the path I’m on now.”

Erik’s brows furrow. “Surely you could get more help at the school for that? No offense, but I don’t want to see you in my truck again.”

Luckily, Charles gets what he means, and just sighs. “Mutant teachers are hard to find. Mutant teachers willing to put themselves in the public eye are even harder to find.”

“Why the public eye?”

Charles rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, as if he were bashful. “Oh, I suppose I have a bit of a reputation as a civil rights activist. Gotten myself in a lot of trouble, both before and after the chair. I think CNN calls me Professor X?”

And that’s when Erik turns to plant one hand on his leg and really look at Charles. _“You?”_ He asks, incredulously. “You’re Professor X?”

Charles crosses his arms over his chest and raises his eyebrows. “I see you’ve heard of me.”

In retrospect, Erik really should have realized this sooner.

“You--I’ve followed your work for years. Your thesis on genetics, from Oxford--it’s outstanding. I had no idea you opened up a _school,_ of all things.”

Charles has the grace to look flattered and not embarrassed when he says, “Well, I’ve not exactly been gung-ho about going public with it. Our first line of defense is anonymity, and with my ‘celebrity status’ I don’t want to subject the children to any cameras poking in their faces.”

A noble goal. Erik still can’t believe that this polite, pretty man who was three years younger than him was the juggernaut of mutant rights in America.

Erik opens his mouth, and as he tries to think of something to say and his jaw hangs slightly open he can’t think of anything smart. For god’s sake, it wasn’t like Charles was really a celebrity, but Erik was still floored by him all the same.

“I think…” he starts. He really should not be chatting up one of his patients in the back of an ambulance. “...I think that even though I disagree with...many of your end goals and ideals in your civil rights movement, you are a stellar scientist and speaker and a good man.”

Charles is looking at him with wide eyes, and Erik feels himself flush. “Charles.” He adds. “You’re a good man, Charles.”

Then Charles does something Erik was not expecting, he turns onto his side and leans one arm underneath his head on the stretcher and absolutely _beams._

“Please, Erik, I would love more than anything to know why you disagree with me.”

He shoots Charles a withering look. “I’ve been told I’m terrifying to argue with. I don’t want to get your heart rate up.”

A hand is waved at him again. “I’m not delicate, man, I’ve argued my fair share! Tell me what your vision is for mutants in this country.”

And that is how Erik spends the last ten minutes of this ride to Phelps medical center going off on a tirade about Senator Kelly, and Sergeant General Stryker, and government engineer Bolivar Trask, and radicalism and centralism and liberalism and assimilation and separation and so many other things that by the time Logan pulls open the doors to take Charles in Erik actually has to stop talking in the middle of a sentence.

He raises a thick eyebrow at the both of them. “You two having fun in there?”

Charles is in the best mood Erik has seen anyone in...ever. “Absolutely!” He chirps, as Erik makes himself stand to unbuckle him from the stretcher so they can get him back in the wheelchair. Erik reassures Logan (maybe a bit too aggressively) that he’ll push him into the building, and all Logan does is raise his hands in surrender and chuckle.

Erik hands Charles off to the hospital staff, who are thankful to have a relatively peaceful case instead of one that he would have needed to call ahead for, and can’t resist waving shortly at Charles as they take him to be checked over.

Charles just smiles at him, but Erik hears a very distinct voice in his head:

_You know my address, Erik. I’ve been told I play a mean game of chess._

He tips his head down to the linoleum floor so that no one will hear him laugh, and outside no one sees him kick a pebble into the street with his hands in his pockets like a twelve-year-old with a crush. 

At least, if Logan saw, he didn’t mention it.

\-----------

That weekend, when Erik doesn’t have work at night and isn’t sleeping during the day, he goes back to 1407 Graymalkin Lane.

This time, when he arrives at the gates, he sees children playing in the grass outside. There’s a basketball court, there’s a garden, there’s a lake, and he can spot middle schoolers and college students alike. Around half of them have visible mutations.

Without his doing, the gates swing open for him. At first Erik doesn’t know how that happened, but then he hears someone say _Welcome back, Erik_ in his head and he grins.

He isn’t stared at as he finds his way to Charles’ office through the great twisting halls of the mansion. Rather, he has to dodge kids like they’re very short bowling balls and he’s a very tall pin, but with Charles’ nudging in his head he reaches his chosen destination soon enough. 

“Trust me, they’ve seen stranger than a man with too many teeth in his smile.” Charles says, seated behind his desk, and Erik grins with all of those teeth in return.

“How are you, professor?”

Charles makes a face. “Oh, please, don’t go calling me that. That’s for students. I’m perfectly dandy, my friend, never been better.”

He rolls out from his desk, back in his fancy wheelchair and now dressed in a suit sans tie, looking even more handsome than when Erik had met him. He tries so, so very hard not to let his infatuation show through his thoughts, but he’s still pretty sure Charles knows. 

There’s a pair of chairs by the fireplace, one pushed off to the side. The fire isn’t lit but it’s bound to be, as October gets colder and colder. There’s a metal-- _metal!_ \-- chess set in front of it.

Charles wheels over to the space where the chair had been pushed away and gestures across from himself. “I’d be happy to play, if you have the time. Just be sure to bend the pieces back into shape if you warp them.” He says, and his smile is kind and wise and Erik is in love.

His smile hasn’t left his face. “I won’t warp them, unless I lose.” He says, lowering himself into the chair. He’s got white for this round, and Charles black.

“Then you’d better not, huh?”

There’s a challenge in Charles’ tone, in the smirk on his lips and the quirk of his eyebrow. It was amazing how exciting he made chess, of all games, feel.

“Suppose so.” Erik says, and one of his pawns slides forward on the board without him touching it. He looks up and meets Charles’ eyes with his head lowered, challenging him just the same.

“Would you object to a riveting debate about the latest mutant registration bill proposed in congress, while we’re at it?”

Erik laughs loudly, watches with a grin as Charles moves a pawn of his own.

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally a lot angstier when i came up with the idea for it, but after writing so much drama and sadness recently i wanted to write something fun and nice. i might write an angsty remix to this, but who knows. this also might be pretty cheesy, but there's certainly no shortage of funny meetcutes in the cherik tag, so i'm not too worried about it!
> 
> i am not paraplegic nor am i jewish, so if something needs to be corrected please tell me! i did research but i always worry about misrepresenting :[
> 
> also, please just comment to tell me what you think! comments keep writers like me going and they make my day every time i see that one's been left on my fics! i love hearing your thoughts <3


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